I’d sort of lost track of this thread for a while. Interesting to read well read people discussing food shortages and the role of agriculture in everyday lives in this thread.
Really appreciate your comments on this thread. Agree that most modern famines fit that description, but not all.
I don’t think the Irish potato famine would completely fit that description. Certainly Ireland was exporting some grain during that famine, but that only made it worse. It would have still been a substantial famine on it’s own.
The great Bengal famine of 1770 was again exacerbated by poor government policy, but the original cause was smallpox and crop failure.
There are other similar examples within the last 400 years. I think one thing we can learn is that in times of dire shortages, governments (or people outside government, but control the means of food production) enact policies which mulitply the dire effects of the shortage. This is true for Communist countries, as well Monarchies.
I don’t have an example of a modern day famine in a Democracy, which is not due to war, but I think history still teaches Democracies also install poor policy when there are food shortages. In WWII, we had price controls on meat in the U.S. I think most historians would agree that policy increased shortages, rather than rectify them.
I think @Zone6 had a very good point that Covid was a trial run for an emergency. I’ve mentioned before, about 1% of the U.S. population died from Covid. Although it’s traumatic to lose a loved one. Statistically speaking, that number is insignificant as far as historical pandemics go.
I could easily imagine a pandemic which killed 10% of the population or more. What I can’t imagine is the extent of pandemonium from an event like that. I doubt even “essential” workers would go to work, if they had to risk their lives to do so.
Likewise, if there was a severe EMP event (even if caused by natural solar activity) I can’t imagine how our nation would function without electricity.
I think our modern times have broken the historical mold. What I mean by is that because we are so interdependent on electricity, computers, and the specialization of work, I would not expect the kind of resiliency to a truly catastrophic event that has been shown in the past. Likewise, there is no historical precedent for the type of easy mass destruction capable from nuclear weapons (with essentially a push of a button). Because of these things, I just don’t think we can look to history to see a model, because what we have now is outside humankind’s historical experience.
I think @fruitnut makes a good point that if circumstances where at a famine level, people would steal any food available anyway. That could/probably would happen if there was a disaster on a nuclear level.
But, in a democracy, there is a good chance that in all but the worst famine scenarios, there would probably be rationing (like we did during WWII) so that some food would be available.
I think in that case, people who grow more of their own food fare better, generally. The government could take your own personal food stores (as the Soviet Union did during the Ukrainian famine of 1921, which caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians). But that falls under one of the worst case scenarios.
Even then, folks who grow some of their own food are probably better off than not growing any of their own food.